Hundreds, possibly thousands of celebrities have had their names permanently banned from the new .xxx adults-only internet domain.
El Reg can reveal that everyone from Justin Bieber to Piers Morgan has had their .xxx address placed into a permanent "reserved" status by the registry manager, ICM Registry.
This means that …

what if...

@tkioz

You mean somenone like Teresa May?

A google image search (smut filter off, obviously) produces 3 images of Teresa May, the top-shelf mag model (the first one being wikipedia). The fourth image is of Teresa May, the Home Sec (a Daily Mail article about her cleveage, of all things).

Re: He Who Shall Not Be...

Re: Re: He Who Shall Not Be...

Re:What if?

I was wondering the same thing. Of course they'd probably not want the confusion, if it was me (not that I have any such plans) I'd use a stage name.

As to discrimination there's a small point here. It's reasonable to expect that some enterprising person might want to register for example britneyspears.xxx and misuse it, which would lead to legal action sooner or later anyway. Stopping this before it gets that far is responsible. On the other hand I doubt someone will want to register markwhorunsthelocalchippie.xxx and if they did there is a greater chance they're doing it because that's who they really are. It is possible someone might register a domain like that as a form of harassment, however since there is no real financial reward for doing so since the person isn't a famous sex symbol or public figure it would require someone to go a lot further out of their way to do it. Public figures while debatable are probably better off protected since they tend to inspire stronger feelings, and since they're known of by many more people they're a much bigger target for harassment than some random person off the street.

Plus if anyone else wants their name protected they can probably request it. The people protected for free are the kind of people who wouldn't even blink at the costs involved in said protection generally, thus this is more of a courtesy to them that they don't need to do anything. Since they're probably influential in one way or another it's a good business move.

Hehehe.

...half a dozen spellings of Mohammed...

I have to ask, others MUST know...

The 'Kleenex' board must be in a quandary, do they risk alienating some of their 'customers' by blocking their domain name, or offer their own site to support their 'customers', to encourage more use of their product. Toughie that one, what will they do?

Dead

And why should e.g. michaeljackson.xxx be protected, it's not even a living person (for many years as it turns out) or for that sake mickeymouse.xxx which is a fictional charecter, like harrypotter.xxx also fictional